12 thoughts on “Colt PR keep tweeting my blog posts as if they were theirs”

They are not claiming that they wrote the article, they are just automatically feeding blogs they like into Twitter, the title and link. There is nothing saying “written by Colt PR”. They are not reblogging it under their byline. I would be happy.

One of the other blogs they TwitterFeed is ReadWriteWeb.com, great company to keep. Seems like a good thing to me. Let me know if I am missing something.

I guess you’re right Jason. They’ve been doing it for a long time and I opted for your strategy ie they’re promoting me for free.

But the flipside is that their Twitter account will now be associated with a lot of social media terms because they’re syndicating my content – and others, as you say – without having to lift a finger, so Twitter searches for those terms might find them in preference to me, and I don’t think that’s fair.

There’s also the issue of whether they’re actually monitoring what they’re producing on their feed. I very much doubt they know that they tweeted this out. At least, they haven’t contacted me.

To be honest I just did this as a bit of an idle test. I’ll probably remove the post sometime soon. It was really a post designed to slot into the world of Twitter and consequently doesn’t have a long shelf life.

In short: We offer a Social Media feed service on our Twitter account. We’ve chosen from our favourite sources and bloggers. It’s true that we don’t “produce” anything in this feed ourselves anymore – we’ve actually just facilitated a news service. Debates, personal expression and comments are posted by our personal accounts. Perhaps it isn’t the ideal way of doing things, and we’ve tried not to be a spambot, but selectively chosen relevant sources for our followers.

For the record Ole, feel free to tweet out socialfresh.com posts any time you would like. ; )

Seriously though, I completely respect Brendan’s perspective. And the fact that you are replying here shines well on your intent too. I think any logical person clicking on a link you were feeding into Twitter would see that you are curating and not publishing. Seems obvious. But at the same time, it is Brendan’s content and if her feels it is not transparent, he has the right to ask you to clarify or stop or whatever.

The vast majority of tweets you issue are in English. But your bio – which you say explains what’s going on – is in Norwegian. So the audiences that will be reading the tweets will, in the main, not be able to read the bio. So they, like me, will naturally assume that you’re riding off the back of their content.

Also, on your website, the only part that is in English actually says ‘Our Twitter Updates’! They’re not ‘your updates’ – they’re my blog posts, which you’re syndicating!

So I can see what you’re doing but I do think you need to be more transparent about it. Changing the description on your home page would help, as would stating what you’re doing on your bio in your audience’s language. I’d also recommend adding something to the feed, perhaps put a prefix before tweet saying ‘Syndicated’? Even better, depending on which tool you’re using to do this, if you can have a different identifier for each feed, then put the name of the blogger in, something like “Syndicated from Brendan Cooper”.

You say the topic has been up for discussion many times, and if a significant proportion of these discussions are in response to negative feedback, then, well, you should consider changing, surely? It’s not true that any PR is good PR.

I agree we could be more explicit. Our target audience at coltpr was Norwegian, and we wanted to help them to find inspiration in blogs from around the world. We actually didn’t think people like you, Todd Defren, RWW, Brian Solis or Chris Brogan would care if we tweeted your blog posts, but I understand your message about being more transparant about who wrote these in the tweets.

I don’t agree that we present your blog post as our own, but we should absolutely credit you by name.

The reason why we’ve continued with the feed is because of all the positive feedback. The negative feedback gives us learning about other peoples opinions and a reason to evaluate ours. That’s the fun part.

Personally I think the List-function on Twitter, paper.li and netvibes let the users make a better service. The awarness and knowledge about social medias has increased drastically the last 6-12 months in Norway, so perhaps it’s time to evaluate again.

I’ll do some changes in our settings tomorrow morning. Thanks for your input.

That is what social media ... marketing team or experienced agency to develop content calendars in advance to receive approval from the appropriate internal stakeholders prior to posting. This approach can help ensure all parties are in agreement on the ...

social media groups, etc)? Research your target audience to determine what type of content you want to provide. Step 3: Confront the brutal facts. Being honest with yourself may be challenging for you. In order to make your content marketing strategy a ...

Begin by thinking about what you wish to accomplish with your video content marketing strategy. Do you want to draw attention to your products and services? Do you want to use your videos as a recruitment tool? Are you trying to increase brand awareness?

But content marketing is just one part of a larger enterprise brand marketing challenge ... evolve our progressive content strategy." About Sprinklr Sprinklr is the most complete enterprise social media management technology in the world, purpose-built ...

This professional copywriting course is aimed at Content Marketers, Social Media Marketers, Marketing Managers, and Junior Copywriters in San Francisco. With this course, marketers will ensure that their brand is speaking in a distinct and unified voice ...

Last week, we released our latest trends report, Content Marketing Strategies ... partner brand collaboration. Yet, that’s exactly what viral safety videos have done. Not only have airline safety videos become a popular share on social media, they ...

Ford is driving forward with a social-first marketing strategy, as the car maker ... said that rather than concentrate media spend on coverage in car magazines and on TV shows, social media now offers the brand a greater access to a larger pool of fans.